In some systems, packets are assigned to flows, each of which represents a logical set of packets being transferred between a pair of communicating devices.
One problem in the known art is that there are certain activities for application to flows, e.g., QoS (quality of service), that are not dependent on any one particular flow, but are applicable across a collection of more than one flow. For a first example, it might be desirable to limit the amount of traffic for communication using a UDP protocol, regardless of which flows those are. For a second example, it might be desirable apply a more limited set of QoS rules to the set of all “guest” users, while applying a less limited set of QoS rules to the set of all registered users (e.g., those with known accounts). For a third example, it might be desirable to apply a combination of firewall and QoS rules for traffic, depending on the type of application, communication protocol, and location of the users.